Tuebingen: Day 1.5

Ok, so while the hotel's net connection is getting fixed (the hotel manager/maybe-owner didn't seem too happy about it either :) I backpacked it around town looking for an Internet cafe. I was expecting a nice darkwood little cafe table, comfy chairs, tasty coffee, maybe a sugary snack and a wifi connection (with a power jack close at hand). No such luck. I asked in a couple of places but they just told me to keep going farther down the street. Until I finally emerged out of old town Tuebingen into the modern-day section. Then I found this place. What a dump! The pic's blurry, and that's just as well. You should be able to see the carrel my laptop is situated in, with the power cord extending behind me plugging into the wall (why not install a power strip or outlet in the carrel?). At least what you get is a hardline connection (feels about 100Mbps—yup, that's what it is according to Apple's "Network Utility" app), with the cat-6 cable conveniently duct-taped to the desk :) In the pic you can also see the tacky sans-serif printed letters "T CA" of "INTERNET CAFE" scotch-taped to the windows. The guy next to me had some kind of Hindu song blaring out his workstation (you can rent a workstation or plug your laptop) and the guy opposite me is smoking. (Lots of smoking around here; guess Germany hasn't gone fully smoke-free yet; yeah in the old days I'd light one up too while pounding on the qwerty but these days I can't stand the way my jeans smell the next day, pew!)

So that'll do it for today probably. I'm quite fed up with my cell phone camera and saw a nice Canon 7 megapixel that maybe I'll at least go take a look at. I played with a couple at a large gadget store in Zurich and after resetting the language to English, the camera functioned just like you'd expect its American counterpart to. One thing I'm worried about is its battery charger; obviously it'll be made for European wall outlets. But I'm thinking that might not be a bad idea since I think it might be easier to pick up a US one back in the states than it might be finding a European one later (next time I'm in Europe). The guy across from me just sneezed and/or blew his nose or something, so I think I'll take that as an indication that it's time to vamoose.